I am an evil giraffe. Who no longer blogs about politics.

Just because they’re not anywhere near a majority at the moment doesn’t mean that they’re not prepared to stop on their radical agenda. I imagine that the Tucson shootings must seem to be a heaven-sent opportunity for them:

Rep. John Conyers (Mich.), top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and 15 other Democrats on the panel sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Friday seeking hearings on several gun-safety issues related to the Tucson shooting.

Conyers and his fellow House Democrats wanted to ‘investigate’ (read: grandstand) on extra-large ammunition clips; less superficially obnoxiously, they wanted an investigation into the procedures regarding mentally ill people’s access to guns. The problem is, it’s a little disingenuous of them to have the hearings now. There’ll be plenty of time for those after we hear precisely how Loughner slipped through the system – and actually get confirmation that the man is too insane to stand trial.

House Republicans understand that last bit, which is why I can take this occasion to write something that I had so few opportunities to meaningfully do during the previous four years: “Representative John Conyers? Sit down, make yourself comfortable, and pour yourself a big mug of Shut The F*** Up.”(more…)

The Left gets its violent responder to hate speech, after all: the only problem is, from their point of view he’s aimed the wrong way.

I started following the saga of J. Eric Fuller a couple of days ago: the short version is that he was one of the victims of the Tucson attack of last week that killed six people and nearly killed Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Despite the fact that the consensus is, from the President on down, that harsh political rhetoric had nothing to do with the attack (the shooter is generally conceded to have been motivated by violent paranoid schizophrenia, not political beliefs), Mr. Fuller has made a name for himself by declaring that the right wing is responsible for the attacks, to the point where he is calling for Sarah Palin’s arrest for treason. And I was going to let all of that go: the guy did get shot*, he was a hardcore Democrat beforehand – and, honestly, Fuller didn’t sound all that much different than this fool (more here) or this fool or the fools found here (and see here for much, much more). Free speech is free speech, even when the guy’s cynically milking the fetishes of the Left, am I right?

Except that Mr. Fuller wasn’t being cynical. He really, truly believes what he’s been told by the netroots; which is why he’s under arrest tonight for making actual, public death threats against Trent Humphries, who was not involved with the Tucson attacks in any way, shape or form but who is the president of the Pima County Tea Party. Mr. Humphries has, in fact, been getting death threats all week; this was just the first time it was done in a fashion that the media couldn’t ignore.

Whether or not you think that it cleared the bar raised this morning by former Governor Palin; personally, I suspect that there were additions and revisions based on the first speech. I certainly do think that the ‘It did not’ add-on was meant as a rebuke to the President’s own party base, far too many of whom have been acting in a manner and using a tone that the President was visibly eager to rise above.

So… I guess we’ll see if that takes. In the meantime: well done, Mr. President. And see? Getting that out of me was easier than pulling teeth.

Shocking, I know: but if Jared Loughner is in point of fact a violent paranoid schizophrenic with no control over his actions, then it complicates my desire to see him executed for murdering six people, including a nine-year-old girl. I suspect that he will be determined to have been aware of the consequences of his actions – and I do not actually subscribe to Lithwick’s either/or of politically-motivated, self-aware shooter/apolitical unaware crazy person; obviously, Loughner could be a apolitical, self-aware shooter who is barely sane enough to stand trial – but if it turns out that the guy was truly incapable of understanding what he was doing then there’s some question as to the point of executing him.

It’s a high one. A much higher one than your attendants are telling you that it is. They are almost certainly telling you to concentrate on the ‘blood libel’ comment – which, by the way, will immediately resonate with at least 40% of the population of the country, mostly because it is damned accurate* – but what you really need to do is take note of the fact that she’s saying the things that the President should be saying right now about the need to come together, the glory of this country – and, yes, that the Democratic party is acting like a bunch of [expletive deleted] right now, and that they need to stop.

Call in your speechwriters. Make them watch this speech. Tell them that you need one just like it, only twice as good. Because if you don’t – if you go with your usual scheme where you try to set yourself up as the only rational solution in a world full of the irrational – you will merely hasten your irrelevance.

Now that earlier attempts to define the narrative have apparently collapsed (even regular Democratic voters aren’t willing to blame the Right for the Tucson shooting), let us take this moment to discover what we have learned about stereotypical reactions to tragedies and atrocities. And what is the most important thing that we have learned? It’s that the blogosphere and the pundit class can be neatly divided into two groups:

When one group heard of the Tucson shooting, they rightly prayed for the victims.

When the other group heard of the shooting, they prayed for the ‘right’ victims.

I will leave it to the individual reader to pick his or her ‘favorite’ examples of each – and to decide for him or herself just Who these groups are praying to.